In situations involving single numbers—or letters when spelling out—any of these numbers or letters may be replaced by one out of sequence, a numerical for a letter or vice versa, or just a random word. This is most often done by The Ditz or by someone mocking their perceived lack of general knowledge, or by characters to try to appear stupid.

This trope comes in a few different flavors:

1: Sequences:
You know how the numerical alphabet goes? You know how the phonetic alphabet goes? You know what alphabet spaghetti looks like? Stick the four in a blender. May (later) be justified because Six Is Nine.

C: Lists:
Always Played for Laughs, but not always by someone stupid as in Real Life it is entirely possible to forget where you got up to when designating reasons in lists and/or if it was with numbers or letters. The best examples follow the structure of "number-letter-thing."

Tues-day: Isolated Replacement:
A number or letter is replaced by something else—anything else, maybe even a picture—in an isolated situation. Let's say you're in math class and you get asked to write on mini wipe boards the answers to some incomplete equations. What's 3x5? You draw a duck. What's 10% of 160? You write "Ze."

9: Alternative Number System:
These people don't work in metric (decimal). They don't even work in imperial. Their counting can be non-standard with a perfectly legitimate reason In-Universe. Only if other characters think it's stupid will it count.

Examples

Home Alone. As the McAllister family wonder about Kevin from Paris, Megan asks Buzz if he's not the least bit concerned about his well being, or something bad happening to him.

Buzz: No, for three reasons: A) I'm not that lucky. 2) We have smoke detectors. And D) We live on the most boring street in the United States of America, where nothing remotely dangerous will ever happen, period.

In Trope NamerThe Ringer, Steve Baker (Johnny Knoxville) is pretending to be mentally retarded, and one of the things he says while practicing in the mirror is, "I can count to potato!"

In Discworld, trolls have a counting system based on fours, rather than tens (apart from Detritus, who ends up counting in binary). As a result a troll counting "one, two, three, many"note and continuing "many-one, many-two" all the way up to "many-many-many-three" which is followed by "lots" comes across this way (leading to an In-Universe stereotype that trolls can't count past three).

The Heroes of Olympus: The monsters going through the Doors of Death in Tartarus go through in groups with designations going from A-22 to Double Red. Hyperion wonders just what kind of number system that is.

Justified in Alcatraz Versus The Shattered Lens. Alcatraz deliberately numbers his chapters in a way that makes no sense, so that if the order-obsessed cult of Evil Librarians tries to read it their heads will explode.

The Doctor: First things first. One. We are going to climb through this ship. B. (No.) Two. We are going to reach the bridge. Three. Or C. We are going to save the Titanic. And, coming in a very low four. Or D. Or that little iv in brackets they use in footnotes. Why? Right then, follow me.

In an early Peanuts strip, Lucy counts her cookies thusly: "One, six, eleventy-four, thirteen-eight, nine million, twelvty-three". But despite this, she can still tell that Snoopy took two of them when she wasn't looking.

Constable Dogberry: Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

Disney Theme Parks. At the entrance to Toontown in Disneyland, there's a population counter which is constantly cycling through numbers...and screws, stars, dumbbells, TNT, and various other random things.

Red Guy: WHAT ELSE DO I KNOW ABOUT SUPER COW? WHAT ELLLLSE?! OKAY, THINK! A) She speaks Spanish. 2) She's a superhero...

Chicken kicking Cow out of his new treefort

Chicken: 1) It's for men only. And B) You're a six-hundred-pound girl!

The Simpsons is notorious for its portrayal of the "typical hillbilly". In "Rednecks and Broomsticks", Lisa is playing with the Spuckler children, they counted while she hid as saying, "One, two, backwards-z, one-legged triangle, banana hotdog, double-banana hotdog, sixty-corncob-two..."

In "Marge's Son Poisoning". Homer is doing curls with a dumbbell. He starts counting normally, before randomly skipping through numbers, and then including 'banana'.

Strange Hill High: After Mitchell breaks maths in "The 101% Solution", the answer to one square root problem become 'banana football'. Later, while attempting to score -1% on a maths exam, Mitchell gives the answer to one question as 'hamburger'.

In one episode of The Fairly OddParents, Mr. Crocker states that learning math is a waste of time, as in a world where fairies exist, fairies can just warp reality so two plus two equals fish.

The segments in the fourth installment of Spike and Mike's series Lloyd's Lunchbox are numbered Lesson One, Lesson B, Third, and Lesson 4.

Rock Bottom demonstrates this in a Felix the Cat cartoon where he and the Professor are launching themselves from a cannon:

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